Your Opinion: President Obama has done it again

Our wonderful law abiding president has done it again. As a continuation of his resistance of the Welfare Reform law of the 1990s, he signed an executive order expanding what is called work, for those collecting welfare payments. The underlying concept of welfare reform was that able-bodied adults should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving welfare aid.

The welfare reform law was very successful. In the four decades prior to welfare reform, the welfare caseload never experienced a significant decline. But, in the four years after welfare reform, the caseload dropped by nearly half. Employment surged and child poverty among affected groups plummeted. The driving force behind these improvements was the rigorous new federal work requirements contained in the law.

The president also transgressed the law in the following areas: Even though the Democrat-controlled Senate rejected the president’s cap-and-trade plan, his Environmental Protection Agency classified carbon dioxide, the compound that sustains vegetative life, as a pollutant so that it could regulate it under the Clean Air Act. After the Employee Free Choice Act, designed to bolster labor unions’ dwindling membership rolls, was defeated by Congress, the National Labor Relations Board announced a rule that would implement “snap elections” for union representation, limiting employers’ abilities to make their case to workers and virtually guaranteeing a higher rate of unionization at the expense of workplace democracy.

After an Internet regulation proposal failed to make it through Congress, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it would regulate the Web anyway, even despite a federal court’s ruling that it had no authority to do so. Although Congress consistently has barred the Department of Education from getting involved in curriculum matters, the administration has offered waivers for the No Child Left Behind law in exchange for states adopting national education standards, all without congressional authorization.

Since it objects to existing federal immigration laws, the administration has decided to apply those laws selectively and actively prevent the state (like Arizona) from enforcing those laws themselves. Rather than push Congress to repeal federal laws against marijuana use, the Department of Justice (DOJ) simply decided it would no longer enforce those laws. DOJ also has announced that it would stop enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act or defending it from legal challenge rather than seeking legislative recourse.

We have gone from “hope and change” to “I hope it changes.”

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